Center Stage
by LawliPop
Summary: It's opening night of the school play, and Kelly has the flu! It's up to Suze to play the lead role of Juliet...but will she end up falling for her star-crossed lover? (one-shot, PS)


**A/N: Another one-shot, because this idea was bugging me. It's my entry in the Sacred Paul's Story Post in the MCBC! I hope it's good...please R&R!**

**Disclaimer: Mediator and all of its characters belong to Meg Cabot. Romeo and Juliet belongs to William Shakespeare. **

* * *

_Center Stage_

Opening night.

There was a huge crowd of people gathered to see this evening's production. The scenery was all set up over the stage, and students were scurrying around to get in to their positions before the curtain pulled open. I was standing Stage Right, about to do my part as an extra once the play started. Everything seemed perfect. We were all ready to go. We were prepared.

"Suze!"

I blinked and craned my neck. Standing near the girls' dressing room was CeeCee, who was Stage Manager for the play. She was waving me over, and there was a desperate look on her face. Confused, I went over, trying to make as little noise as possible.

"What is it?" I whispered.

CeeCee looked up at me. "It's terrible. Oh, my God, it's so terrible," she said in a shaky voice.

I raised an eyebrow. "What is?"

CeeCee grabbed my arm and pulled me into the dressing room, closing the door quietly behind her. "Kelly has the flu!" She pointed the Kelly, who was leaning over the sink and looking absolutely awful.

I frowned. Well, that wasn't good. Kelly was playing the lead female role. If she couldn't perform, then the play would have to be cancelled. "What are you going to do, Cee?" I wondered. "Reschedule until she's better?" My albino friend just looked at me slyly. I gulped, suddenly feeling queasy myself. "Don't you dare think about having me"

CeeCee clasped her hands together and gave me a pleading look. "You're Kelly's understudy, Suze! You're the only one who knows her lines. You have to play the part, or else we really will have to call the play off. Do you want all of my hard work to go to waste?"

I shook my head. "No, but...I don't want to play Kelly's part."

"You agreed to be her understudy after try-outs!"

"Well, I didn't actually think she'd get the flu on opening night!" I sighed and folded my arms across my chest. "Cee, I can't. I mean, _Paul_ is playing lead male for God's sake. I have to kiss him!"

CeeCee just rolled her eyes. "Grow up, Simon, this is show business!" With that said, she grabbed a hanger off the rack that was labeled with Kelly's character name. She then shoved it at me and opened the door to the attached bathroom. "Change. _Now_."

Seeing the murderous look in my best friend's eyes, I took the dress and went into the bathroom to get dressed. It was a good thing that Kelly was almost the same size as me. The dress would only be a little bit snug around the stomach.

* * *

About thirty minutes later the play was underway, and I was no longer an extra. I was now Juliet Capulet for our spring play, _Romeo and Juliet_. In only a matter of moments, I was going to have to see Paul enter from the opposite side of the stage. Brad, playing Tybalt, would argue with whomever it was playing Lord Capulet, and then Paul and I would dance. And that would lead up to the first kiss of the play.

I was sweating, I think. I stood next to Brad, who looked absolutely hilarious in his costume, and listened as he talked to 'Lord Capulet'.

"_Patience perforce with willful choler meeting makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall now seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall."_

Brad finished his line and then went off towards Stage Left to converse with the other masqueraders. I stepped to the center of the stage and saw Paul there, waiting for his Juliet. He was quite shocked, to say the least, when he saw it was me in Kelly's costume. And I myself was quite surprised to find that I really liked how Paul looked in his Romeo attire.

He wore tight fitting black slacks and a long black shirt. A blood-red cape hung around his shoulders, falling to the floor by his feet. Covering his face was a black mask. It did nothing to hide his eyes, because they still shone a radiant, hypnotizing blue.

Grinning, Paul stepped forward and took my hand in his. "_If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."_

I blinked and looked away from his face. I wasn't really supposed to, but I did anyways. His eyes were just way too intense to stare at for too long. _"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."_

"_Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?"_

"_Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer." _

Shakespeare confuses me. How the heck do people understand what we're saying up here!

Paul stepped closer to me, and we made a small circle as we danced. "_O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray. Grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."_

Huh?

Well, thank God I had a script. And that I had read the Shakespeare-Made-Easy version before I tried out.

"_Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake."_

The smile on Paul's face widened and he moved his hands down to my waist, planting them on my hips firmly. I tried hard to fight down my blush. And as I made the mistake to look back up at him, taking the time to allow my eyes to slowly rake in the muscles showing through his black shirt, I caught a whiff of his spicy cologne. It made me feel a little faint, for a moment. We were really close now, too.

Paul lowered his head slightly, so that his lips were mere millimeters away from mine. _"Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take." _He closed the distance between us with a soft, warm kiss. It was a staged kiss of course, but it still felt absolutely amazing. It was nothing like the other kisses I had received from him in the past. It was so...tender.

And I had to wonder if it was an act or not. Would he have kissed Kelly in the same way? Would he have let his lips linger on hers longer than necessary before saying his next line?

"_Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged."_

I swallowed hard, trying to pull myself back together. _"Th-then have my l-lips the sin that th-they have took." _

From backstage, I saw CeeCee slap her forehead with her clipboard. Guess she was angry at me for stuttering.

"_Sin from my lips?"_ Paul quoted, looking to be rather perturbed. _"O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again!"_

You know...Paul kind of sounded hot when he was speaking all Shakespearean. Oh, and now he's kissing me again. Really soft and lovingly. It feels so nice and I – Oh, my God I'm kissing him back! That's not in the script! Juliet is _not_ supposed to kiss Romeo back! She's supposed to _stay still_!

What am I-? Oh, crap! Now my arms are around his neck. This is a disaster. People in the audience are starting to _whoop_. Not to mention CeeCee looks like she wants to skin me alive.

Paul pulled away slowly and then winked. My cheeks turned a bright red color and I looked at the stage floor. Composing myself, I said my next line: "_You k-kiss by the book." _

Boy, was that the truth.

I was so relieved when a girl named Chelsea, who was playing the role of the Nurse, came over and told me, Juliet, that Lady Capulet was waiting for me. Feeling absolutely mortified, I scurried off the stage. And there I waited until my next entrance.

* * *

After the play, and after being practically beaten by CeeCee for screwing up her ball scene, I was standing near the punch bowl at the cast party. There was cake, music, gifts for all the actors, and a whole crowd of people jammed in the cafeteria. I was alone, and most other people were dancing. Kelly had even managed to come, which wasn't really a good thing sine she started chewing me out as well. 

"What the hell did you think you were doing, kissing Paul like that?"

I just shrugged and gave her a sheepish grin. "Acting?"

Before she could yell at me, the one person I did not want to see at the moment came up and asked me to dance. Paul wasn't in his sexy Romeo costume right now, but he still looked really good in a pair of dark jeans and a white button-up shirt. And his cologne was just as strong as it had been on stage.

"It's only proper for the two leads to dance together at the after party," he explained.

Oh, he's a good liar. But I still found myself taking his hand and letting him lead me on to the dance floor. The lights hand dimmed low as a slow song began to play. Adam waggled his eyebrows at me as we passed him. I just glared and looked away. With each step Paul and I took, I felt like running away.

But once he enclosed his arms around me, pulling me flush against his tanned body, I found that I had absolutely no more desire to move. This, I thought as Paul moved me to the in rhythm to the song, felt really nice. Not only that, but it felt _right_. I felt that I belonged in Paul's embrace, and that was something I had never before even dared to consider.

The song continued, and we swayed in time with it. Dancing with Paul now was different than dancing with him during the ball scene of the play. His movements weren't planned out ahead of time, but they still seemed to flow naturally. We moved artlessly together, and it wasn't any thanks to blocking. It was not acting. It was not the same. It was...real.

And that's what I saw when I looked shyly up into Paul's eyes. Real emotion. He wasn't feeling what he was told to feel by a script. The adoration shining clearly in his ice-blue eyes wasn't put there for acting purposes. It was raw and sincere. And it was meant for me, Suze Simon.

I felt so loved.

And as the song came to an end I made no move to pull away, and neither did Paul. Instead he reached down and took my hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it softly. I bit my lip and looked away from his powerful gaze.

His eyes were still on me, and he brought my hand to rest on his chest over his heart. The feeling of his heartbeat underneath my fingers made my own increase rapidly. The feeling was so indescribable. And so was the feeling aroused when he lowered his head ever-so-slowly and pressed his lips to mine.

The kiss was something similar to the first kiss we had shared together on stage during the masquerade scene. It also held a little bit of a desperate quality that it had when I, playing Juliet, had kissed him, playing Romeo, after Romeo killed himself in the final moments of the play.

We both wanted this kiss, and it showed by the way we both responded to it. I was all too eager to kiss him back, and didn't mind the least bit when the kiss progressed into something deeper. My heart swelled, and my hand tightened into a fist around the loose material of his shirt.

When we both needed oxygen, we pulled away. My breathing was harsh and uneven, and so was his. We just stood there so close to each other, with his arms holding me as close to him as the could and one of my hands on his chest and the other tangled in his thick brown curls. There was no music now, and the whole cafeteria was completely silent.

And before anyone could say anything, Paul leaned down and captured my lips once more. This time the kiss was a quick, teasing one. But it left me feeling the effect Paul wanted me to feel: a craving for more.

I sucked in air deeply, filling my lungs. Our foreheads were now pressed together, and our lips brushed against each other's whenever we took in a breath. And once my breathing was, for the most part, steady, there was only one phrase in my mind that seemed appropriate to utter:

"_You kiss by the book_, Paul Slater."

**The End**

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**A/N: tada! And it's finished. I thought it was kind of cute, if I do say so myself. Please review! Constructive criticism welcome!**


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